This privilege was not the only sign of royal favour: we find Udall in November, 1551, presented by the King to a prebend in Windsor,[306] and later (in March, 1553) to the Parsonage of Calborne, in the Isle of Wight.
After such favours received from Edward, and such services in the Protestant camp, we should expect to find Udall in disgrace under Queen Mary, and sharing with his fellow-Protestants at least the bitter fate of exile, but Mary had apparently preserved a grateful memory for her former fellow-worker in the Erasmian translation. If, indeed, she did not use him as a theologian, she remembered his dramatic talents, and so we find that a special warrant was issued, December 3, 1554, which shows us Udall in the rôle of playwright. The Office of the Queen's Revels was directed by the warrant referred to, to deliver to Udall such "apparel" at any time as he might require for the "setting foorth of Dialogues and Enterludes" before the Queen, for her "regell disporte and recreacion." In the beginning of the document[307] appears an allusion to Udall as having shown previously "at soondrie seasons" his "dilligence" in arranging "Dialogues and Enterludes"—important documentary evidence of his connection with the "Revels," a connection apparently begun with the pageant for which he furnished such poor verses at Anne Boleyn's coronation.
This evidence for the fact that Udall was known as a writer of "plays" before 1554 is singularly corroborated by the quotation of Roister's letter to Custance (Act III., Scene iv.) as an example of "ambiguity" in the 1553 edition of Wilson's Rule of Reason.[308]
As to the nature of Udall's "Dialogues," "Enterludes," and "devises," we are not entirely without information. The very date of the warrant would indicate the occasion for Udall's services (December 3, 1554), if we had not a more definite statement. He was commissioned to get up the Christmas shows before Mary and Philip.
Udall was in a dangerous position, since any reference to the Protestant sympathies of the nation might have cost his life, but he realized the situation, and with good tact presented "divers plaies," the "incydents" of which were very innocent:[309] "A mask of patrons of gallies like Venetian senators, with galley-slaves for their torche-bearers; a mask of 6 Venuses or amorous ladies with 6 Cupids and 6 torche-bearers to them," and some "Turkes archers,"[310] "Turkes magistrates," and "Turkie women," "6 lions' hedds of paste and cement," and a few other harmless paraphernalia.
How long Udall served the queen in this capacity we do not know. In 1555, towards the end of his career, we find him at his old calling as master of Westminster School.[311] When in November of the following year the old monastery was again opened, naturally Udall's services became superfluous, and he was doubtless discharged; and so indeed the darkness enshrouding the last months of his life may cover a period of great distress. He died in December, 1556, and found his last resting place in St. Margaret's, Westminster; where almost thirty years before Skelton had found first a sanctuary and then a grave.
It seems that the queen did not erect a monument over the ashes of her old friend, at least none is registered by the industrious Weever;[312] but Udall does not need a monument from Queen Mary, he has erected it himself—ære perennius—in the annals of English literature.
Date of the Play.—Roister Doister was formerly assigned to the time of Udall's mastership at Eton (1534-41).[313] In more recent years, however, this date has been rejected, and Professor J. W. Hales has tried to show that "this play was in fact written in 1552, and more probably written for Westminster school."[314]
The arguments of Professor Hales, as far as I can see, might be summarized thus:
1. The fact that Wilson—an old Eton boy himself, who left the school in 1541, and ought to have known of the play if it had ever been performed there—does not insert the "ambiguous letter" in his first and second editions of the Rule of Reason (1551, 1552), whereas he inserts it in the edition of 1553, "suggests that this comedy was written between the appearances of the second and the third editions."